Memory and the Cloister: Mapping the Architecture of Observant Franciscan Identity in Brescia, 1422–1610

1 A Premeditated Move from the Periphery to the Centre

The Observant friars’ trajectory of architectural consolidation in Brescia carried them from second-hand foundations outside the city walls from 1422 to a brand new seat in the bustling heart of the city in 1610 – an achievement which they celebrated by adding a fresco cycle to the second cloister of this new convent (San Giuseppe). To fully appreciate the significance of this fresco cycle (and indeed of the Observant friars’ literal centrality in urban life), it is crucial to examine their pattern of settlement in Brescia, and how it was shaped by complex interactions with the city’s government, Conventual Franciscans, and the general populace. This pattern is remarkably comparable to when, in the thirteenth century, mendicant orders first entered the urban environments they aimed to inhabit. Their arrival in often already densely inhabited locations needed to be continuously negotiated with urban elites as well as more humble city dwellers. As a result, their buildings were shaped by the city and in turn shaped the urban fabric in a reciprocal process. Bruzelius has cogently discussed the development of the late medieval mendicant architecture as a long-term process, characterized by a dynamic, ongoing dialogue between the friars and the urban context, typically leading to episodic series of building interventions.^[14] She demonstrates the importance of paying attention not only to the friars’ churches, but to the entire convent complex, as well as its urban frame.^[15]

I therefore propose to analyse the Observant Franciscan pattern of architectural establishment in Brescia similarly, exploring the utility of Bruzelius’ approach to mendicant architecture – which emphasizes the development of mendicant buildings as an episodic, ongoing process, in constant negotiation with the wider urban context – as a methodological blueprint for the analysis of early modern Observant patterns of settlement as well as architecture. This exploration suggests a model for the analysis of Observant architecture and patterns of settlement, which, unlike initial centuries of mendicant building, are rarely studied. Analytical surveys typically conclude already in the fourteenth century (before the Observant reform movements gained speed) and offer few viable methodological models for later centuries.^[16] Moreover, Observant Franciscan patterns of settlement in the urban centres of Italy have received little dedicated attention.^[17] The fourteenth-century Franciscan Observant movement displayed an interest in establishing itself in rural locations and building simple single nave churches, suggesting preference for simplicity and poverty. Likewise, when settling in Brescia in the fifteenth century, the Observants accepted hand-me-down pre-existing structures outside the city walls. Yet, the tenets and practices of the fourteenth-century movement cannot be projected onto the sixteenth century, as becomes clear from my discussion of the trajectory of settlement of the Observants of Brescia.

By highlighting continuities as well as breaks in mendicant settlement, housing, and building from the long fifteenth century onward, it becomes possible to better assess how Observant movements transformed the existing urban landscapes, already inhabited by other (mendicant) orders. The convent of San Giuseppe which the Observant friars of Brescia eventually realized, is an ambitious urban structure with three cloisters and a church with side aisles and lateral chapels. This is illustrative, rather than unique among Franciscan Observant convents of a similar status at the time. The convents of San Francesco della Vigna in Venice and Sant’Angelo in Milan (likewise heading an Observant Franciscan order province and constructed during the sixteenth century) are also large, monumental complexes in urban contexts. The contingencies of Observant Franciscan settlement in Brescia are particularly relevant to consider, not least because this community consciously reflected on this process through a fresco cycle when they perceived their new convent as complete in 1610. In addition, my analysis of their journey of architectural establishment shows that these friars actively pursued several different routes to achieving a seat in the city centre, revealing the intentionality behind their real estate strategy.

It is important to consider the earliest Franciscan establishments in Brescia – later designated as Conventual – to understand the Observant Franciscan trajectory of establishment there, because the Observant friars directly engaged with these pre-existing structures in their attempts to make it into the city centre.^[18] The very first, ephemeral, Franciscan establishment in Brescia was at San Giorgio, according to tradition it was perhaps even founded by St Francis himself in 1220.^[19] A community of Friars Minor was, at any rate, present in the city by 1221. In 1254 the Commune of Brescia acquired a larger area for the Franciscans just outside the first medieval walls of 1174–1184, which became the friars’ permanent abode. By the time the church and convent were completed in 1265, the friars had moved out of San Giorgio, perhaps already some years previously, and into the new structure of San Francesco, which lay securely within the new city walls of 1237–1254 (see Figure 1).^[20] This relatively rapid and uncomplicated process of settlement was helped by the politics of urban expansion pursued by the Commune of Brescia during this period.^[21]

Figure 1:

The Franciscan convents of San Giorgio and San Francesco. Map of Brescia, in Joan Blaeu, Nouveau theatre d’Italie (Amsterdam: Pierre Mortier, 1704), image source: Wikimedia Commons. Modified by the author.

When the Observant Franciscans arrived in Brescia some two hundred years later, they fared differently. In 1422 Bernardine of Siena – a famous preacher and proponent of the Observant movement – came to preach in Brescia, and was offered the church of San Apollonio outside of the Torrelunga gate (see Figure 1) by the city authorities to found an Observant convent.^[22] This house was damaged during the military altercations between the forces of Venice and Milan in 1438, but soon after repaired and enlarged. In 1457 the nearby church of Sant’Andrea was added to the Observant holdings, and the church and convent of San Rocco were constructed by the friars in response to the plague of 1469.^[23] All of these Observant structures were outside the city walls, including the smaller satellite foundations of Santa Maria delle Rose and San Bernardino (both under the title of San Rocco).^[24] None of these houses survives today, because – following the sack of Brescia by Gaston de Foix in 1512, during which they were damaged – the republic of Venice ordered the Spianata of 1516, which meant that all structures outside the city walls were razed to the ground to improve defensibility. The friars found temporary housing at the churches of Sant’Afra and San Faustino in the city.^[25]

While the Spianata certainly formed the occasion that compelled the Observants to make their move into the city centre, we should be careful with seeing this urgent practical expediency as the only reason. Indeed, the Observants had already previously tried to claim San Francesco: the Conventual Franciscans’ much more centrally located abode, traditionally seen as Francis’ foundation. In 1453 and 1455 the city council passed provisions concerning altercations between the Franciscan Conventuals and Observants (already distinct communities prior to the formal 1517 division).^[26] The formation of the Observant province of Brescia by way of separation from the Observant province of Milan in 1472, most likely strengthened the Observants’ desire for more prestigious housing in the city centre.^[27] This promotion provided an additional reason for the Observants of Brescia, now heading a province, to strive for more befitting lodgings within the city.^[28] In 1496 the city’s special council determined that the Conventuals would not be evicted from the monastery of San Francesco, in order to give it to the Observants.^[29] Clearly, the latter group was still trying to claim San Francesco, notwithstanding regulations which forbade Observant Franciscans to confiscate Conventual Franciscan convent buildings.^[30]

The 1516 Spianata thus added urgency to a pre-existing wish to acquire a more prestigious seat in the city. In fact, already in February 1515 the Observants had started to acquire houses in the area that would later become their convent of San Giuseppe (named after a pre-existing chapel there dedicated to St Joseph) (see Figure 2).^[31] This was before Brescia returned to the dominions of Venice in May 1516, and before the announcement of the Spianata later that year. War damage to the extramural Observant establishments was a likely incentive for buying properties inside the walls. We should avoid, however, a teleological reading of the succession of acquisitions in the Contrada dei Fabii (the future location of San Giuseppe) as a linear development that could only lead to the building of that convent.^[32] In reality, it appears that the Observants pursued various strategies for finding a seat in the city, after extramural existence ceased to be an option. Moreover, the promulgation of Ite et vos by Leo X in 1517 probably enhanced the desirability of a single, monumental seat in the city. The formal separation of the Franciscan Conventuals and Observants into two discrete organizations raised the Observant province of Brescia to a new, more autonomous status.^[33]

Figure 2:

The convents of San Francesco (Conventual), San Giuseppe (Observant), and the area of Santi Pietro & Marcellino. Map of Brescia, in Joan Blaeu, Nouveau theatre d’Italie (Amsterdam: Pierre Mortier, 1704), image source: Wikimedia Commons. Modified by the author.

During the early decades of the sixteenth century, the Observants’ relocation strategy clearly avoided putting all eggs in one basket. The future location of San Giuseppe certainly was not the only site they aimed to develop. Instead, they pursued several projects in parallel. In April 1518 the Observants acquired the church of Santi Pietro & Marcellino in the southeastern corner of the city (see Figure 2) with the intention of constructing a (additional?) convent, but the Commune and the Venetian government had earmarked this zone for military purposes, and the initiative eventually came to nothing. The friars resold Santi Pietro & Marcellino in 1531.^[34] In the meantime, the Observants had not yet taken leave of the idea of dislodging the Conventuals from San Francesco. In 1524 Pope Clement VII issued a bull which confirmed the Conventuals’ possession of San Francesco, at the expense of the Observants. The same bull was reconfirmed later in the same year, and in early 1525 the pope produced yet another bull confirming the same and promising excommunication to the Observants if they would presume to continue to harass the Conventuals about the convent of San Francesco in Brescia.^[35]

The concurrent pursuit of these multiple projects shows that these Observant friars were acutely aware that in order to secure a good seat in the city centre at a time when several orders previously situated outside the city walls were vying for a place – they had to be able to respond rapidly to evolving contexts and contingencies within the city.^[36] The Observant Franciscans were the only previously extramural order that succeeded at successfully developing an entirely new site (San Giuseppe), instead of taking over a pre-existing one, which is testimony to their ability to gain the support of relevant parties and authorities.^[37]

When, after several years of property acquisition in the area, the first stone of the new Observant Franciscan church of San Giuseppe was ceremoniously put in place on 4 October, the Feast of St Francis, in 1519, this convent was by no means a fait accompli.^[38] As we have seen, the friars were at this point still pursuing other real estate projects elsewhere in the city, and the convent complex of San Giuseppe itself would be developed intermittently over the next ninety or so years, until in 1610 the friars considered it finished, as testified by the fresco cycle in the second cloister. Fascinating negotiations with the larger urban context of Brescia characterized this highly episodic building process, shaping both the convent complex as well as its surroundings.^[39]

From 1519 the construction of the church of San Giuseppe progressed relatively rapidly. When on 12 January 1529 the relics of St Silvino and St Rusticiano were discovered during deconstruction works at the Observants’ former seat of Sant’Apollonio outside the walls, these relics could not yet be housed at the church of San Giuseppe. However, only a few years later on 8 August 1532 they were ceremoniously deposited in the altar of St Andrew at the new church, although construction works would still continue.^[40] The “discovery” of these precious relics – belonging to the twelfth and twenty-first ancient bishops of Brescia – at the Observants’ former seat, and their festive installation at their new seat, served to meaningfully connect both seats to the ancient sacred history of Brescia. If anything, this was a savvy response to a happy circumstance. The Observants also forged connections with the urban populace and financed the works by accommodating lay burials in the new structure, many of which are documented for this early, as well as later periods.^[41]

A telling aspect of how negotiations between the friars and their urban surroundings shaped the complex of San Giuseppe, are its three cloisters: the modestly sized chiostro della foresteria (or first cloister), the more substantial, chiostro media o della sacrestia (also called second cloister), and finally the third and largest chiostro grande (see Figure 3). After a squabble with a neighbouring resident in 1534, construction of the middle cloister – also called “second” cloister because of its middling position between the other cloisters – started in 1535, but stalled for a period due to financial difficulties. By 1539, most of the works were complete, while the smallest, so-called “first” cloister, della foresteria, was added later, during the 1540s.^[42] The ebb and flow of available funds, space to build, and exigencies within the city clearly articulated the construction process of the cloisters.

Figure 3:

Schematic plan of ground floor San Giuseppe based on situation in 1813. 1: first cloister, 2: second cloister, 3: third cloister, 4: sacristy, 5: convent church. Image by M. Rouwendaal.

In 1557 the Observants began to acquire more properties on the other side of the Vicolo dei Cancelli, the passage which would later separate the (future) third cloister from the rest of the complex, where they already owned one house. Meanwhile little transpired in terms of building activities, until in 1577 Brescia suffered from a severe attack of the plague. This inspired the city council to take a number of measures, amongst which the promotion of the cult of St Roch, the originally French saint known as a protector against the plague. This was a fortunate turn of events for the Observant Franciscans, who had carried the title and the relics of St Roch from their former, extramural church of San Rocco to the main altar of San Giuseppe. Now the city aimed to finance the enlargement of the “chapel” of St Roch, which coincides with the choir of San Giuseppe.^[43]

The extension of the choir of San Giuseppe, prompted by health calamities in the city, soon also provoked resistance from some of the urban populace, since the expansion threatened the right of passage of certain neighbours through the vicolo behind the choir. On 17 October 1578, the city authorities intervened, decreeing that the choir could only be extended by building over the street in such a way that one could still pass beneath it on horseback or with a cart.^[44] This solution, of building over the passage, has shaped the layout of the complex of San Giuseppe in a unique way. When the third chiostro grande was planned – also in 1578 – its placement likewise respected the passage of Vicolo dei Cancelli. This cloister, built quickly in the years 1605–1610, on the other side of the alleyway, was made reachable by a corridor on the level of the upper floor of the convent complex which connected the pre-existing parts of the convent with the new cloister (see Figure 4).^[45]

Figure 4:

Schematic plan of upper floor San Giuseppe based on the situation in 1813. Image by M. Rouwendaal. N.B. the spaces shown on this plan are different from Figure 3 (ground floor), because Figure 4 represents the 1st/upper floor of the convent.

When the third cloister was completed in 1610, the fresco cycle depicting views of provincial convents was added to the friars’ second, or middle, cloister. This was no coincidence: the cycle demonstrates that the Observant Franciscans of San Giuseppe were well aware of the various locations in which they had previously lived within the city of Brescia. Starting in 1422, this journey had taken the Observant friars to several places in- and outside the city walls, until finally, in 1610, they considered finished the space which they had eventually carved out for themselves. By analysing this trajectory in detail as a long-term, dynamic process – adapting Bruzelius’ approach to late medieval mendicant architecture^[46] – it has become clear that the Observant friars in Brescia did not only respond to the exigencies they were confronted with, but also simultaneously pursued different strategies that might lead to a monumental seat in Brescia’s centre. This included sustained attempts to oust the Conventuals at San Francesco, as well as to develop the sites of Santi Pietro & Marcellino and San Giuseppe. The exact motivation behind their pushes for a central seat in the city is difficult to gauge, but these attempts can certainly not be explained by the razing of the city’s extramural structures in 1516 only. A desire for a convent founded by Francis of Assisi (the Conventuals’ San Francesco) seems probable, while a central location may also have suited increasing prioritization of their ministry to the urban population.^[47] We can conclude at any rate that the Observant friars’ pattern of settlement was driven by intentionality and strategic acumen. This is confirmed by the conscious reflection on their initial foundations and eventual consolidation in Brescia offered by the fresco cycle in their second cloister.

2 A Geographical Fresco Cycle with Architectural Vistas

The fresco cycle in the second cloister at San Giuseppe communicates a much more articulate message than has heretofore been appreciated (see Figure 5). Existing scholarship on the fresco cycle has offered partial readings of its programme. The sequence with scenes from the life of St Bernardine of Siena, the views of Observant Franciscan convents in the province of Brescia (typically two below each Bernardine scene), and the fresco map of Jerusalem situated directly under the final lunette with Bernardine, have all three been analysed separately. This has left the fresco cycle’s overall significance uncharted. By analysing the fresco cycle in the second cloister of San Giuseppe in Brescia as a mural map cycle – a coherent programme of geographical and other images organized around a central theme – its message, representing and commemorating Observant Franciscan architectural and geographical settlement in Brescia and surroundings, can become clear.^[48] Finally, I argue that the visual space of this cloister encouraged the friars living there to reflect on the historical roots and geographical reach of their community daily, to engender a sense of belonging.

Figure 5:

Corridor of the second cloister seen from the sacristy; lunettes with two convent-views below. Brescia, Convento di San Giuseppe. Early seventeenth century. Photograph by the author.

Given its subject, the fresco cycle must have been designed by one or more Observant friars, but their identity is unknown. Some of the frescoes have traditionally been attributed to a late-mannerist painter from Brescia, Antonio Gandino (1565–1630), and/or an unnamed Franciscan friar.^[49] Parts of the cycle’s programme have been described by Rossana Prestini: it includes twenty-six lunettes with scenes from the life of St Bernardine of Siena, accompanied by descriptive captions.^[50] Below each lunette, there are typically two views of Observant Franciscan convents in the province of Brescia (originally thirty-five views existed, five are badly damaged, one has been lost), separated by a medallion with a portrait of a prominent Observant friar. Each view is accompanied by an inscription indicating the convent’s year of foundation, its founder(s), dedication, and occasionally additional details (see Figure 5).^[51] The first lunette, Bernardine’s parents praying for the blessing of a child, is coupled with the cycle’s introductory inscription.^[52] Turning to the views of convents, Prestini points out their value as a source of information on the architecture of Observant Franciscan convents in this province, many of which no longer exist and/or are sparsely documented.^[53] Prestini discusses – separately from the convent-views – the scenes from the life of Bernardine as potentially expressing the devotional interest of private patrons of the convent, some of whose names are still legible.^[54] She mentions the fresco map of Jerusalem, situated directly beneath the final lunette depicting Bernardine buried in Aquila, only once, as though it were extrinsic to the cycle of the second cloister.^[55] Recently published volumes with digitally restored images of frescoes (which are in a regrettable state of conservation) likewise separate the upper and lower registers of the cycle and fail to mention the Jerusalem map.^[56]

The fresco map of Jerusalem, taking up the space of two views of convents, has been analysed by Michele Piccirillo, who in turn pays little attention to the rest of the visual programme in the second cloister (see Figure 6).^[57] Piccirillo describes the bird’s eye view of Jerusalem, and interprets it with reference to Holy Land cartography by friars of the Observant Franciscan province of the Holy Land.^[58] He identifies the Jerusalem map by the Observant Franciscan friar Antonio de Angelis, or a direct derivative, as the fresco map’s source.^[59] De Angelis prepared this map while serving his order in the Holy Land in 1570–1577. The cartographer Mario Cartaro (1540–1614) produced the map, and it was printed as a large copperplate engraving (140 × 206 cm) at the Observant Franciscan convent of Aracoeli in Rome in 1578.^[60] Along with coeval examples of Franciscan Holy Land cartography, the De Angelis map is often praised for its detail and accuracy.^[61] Piccirillo interprets the Jerusalem map at San Giuseppe in Brescia in line with these traditional evaluations, as testifying to Franciscan devotional and “scientific” interest in the Holy Land, as well as to the “great importance of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land among Franciscan communities” elsewhere.^[62] His analysis hangs on a reading of the map’s legend (without making a clear distinction between the fresco map and its print source), and his argument – both the fresco map and its print source accentuate the Franciscan presence in Jerusalem, and commemorate the “bitterness” of these friars’ eventual expulsion from their Mount Zion convent in 1551 – is unconvincing.^[63]

Figure 6:

The fresco map of Jerusalem at San Giuseppe in Brescia. Brescia, Convento di San Giuseppe. Early seventeenth century. Photograph by the author.

I argue that the finer points of Jerusalem topography were not the main interest of this fresco map, and that local interests played a much larger role in the map’s significance for the friars at San Giuseppe during the seventeenth century.^[64] To uncover the significance of this fresco map, and indeed the entire fresco cycle in the second cloister at San Giuseppe in Brescia, attention should be paid to the cycle’s spatial setting and cultural context. While the views of convents in the Observant Franciscan province of Brescia are arguably not maps in the strictest modern sense of the word, these bird’s-eye views are geographical images: they portray the loci that together make up this order province. In addition, the most important framing devices of the cycle are geographical: its introductory inscription offers a geographical description of the order province and it concludes with a Jerusalem map. Therefore, the symbolic significance of these geographical features is crucial for understanding the cycle’s overall visual rhetoric, just as it is for a mural map cycle.^[65] The cycle at San Giuseppe has not figured in discussions of Renaissance painted map cycles. It would also be an odd one out, given its late date – seventeenth, rather than sixteenth, century – and modest setting: in a mendicant convent, instead of a palace of the ruling elite.^[66] Nevertheless, comparison with these splendid and representative examples of painted map cycles of the Italian Renaissance – such as at Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, the Vatican Palace in Rome, and the Palazzo Farnese at Caprarola – can help to reconstruct how the friars of San Giuseppe regarded the geographical fresco cycle in their cloister.^[67]

The map cycle at the Benedictine monastery of San Giovanni Evangelista in Parma (painted one generation before the Brescia cycle) perhaps offers the best basis for comparison, given its monastic context and the inclusion of Holy Land maps. In 1574–1575, a complex iconographic programme was painted on the vaulted ceiling of the library at San Giovanni Evangelista abbey in Parma, under the patronage of the duke of Parma, Ottavio Farnese (1524–1586). Designed by the abbey’s learned abbot, it includes numerous images, such as the Ark of Noah and a view of the Battle of Lepanto, hieroglyphics, emblems, inscriptions in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Syrian, as well as six fresco maps: Jerusalem, Israel, Canaan, the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza, Italy, and Greece.^[68] The cycle at San Giovanni Evangelista in Parma illustrates the complex relationship between printed maps and painted map cycles. Several of its images derive from the apparatus of the Antwerp polyglot bible (1571–1572) by Benito Arias Montano, including its Holy Land maps.^[69] Re-contextualized on the library’s ceiling, these maps take on a new significance, as part of a complex visual commentary on the acquisition of divine knowledge through the study of different religions at the heart of the Farnese dominions.^[70] This illustrates a crucial characteristic of painted map cycles: they are site-specific (the abbey’s library as a place of learning, within the Farnese territory of Parma and Piacenza) and their print sources are re-imaged to address local concerns.^[71]

To discover the local concerns addressed by the fresco cycle at San Giuseppe in Brescia – including the fresco map of Jerusalem rather than its print source – I first discuss the cycle’s overall compositional rationale, revealing what it aims to represent and how. As will become clear, the cycle commemorates Observant Franciscan consolidation in Brescia. Foregrounding the cycle’s spatial setting and primary audience (the friars), I then suggest a likely scenario for its purpose: creating a sense of Observant Franciscan belonging, from local to global levels.

The explicitly geographical inscription the cycle opens with, is key to understanding its overall iconography. This inscription is situated below the first lunette showing Bernardine’s parents praying for the blessing of a child (see Figure 7):

In the past, the Observant province of Brescia was joined with the province of Milan. On account of the war between the most serene Republic of Venice and the Milanesi, it was divided by Pope Sixtus IV in the year 1471 on request of the lords of Venice. It [the province of Brescia] is bathed by four lakes – Garda, Iseo, Spinone, and Idro – and by five rivers: Chieso, Mella, Oglio, Serrio, and Bremmo. It serves three cities – Brescia, Crema, and Bergamo – and has thirty-five locations, that is in the region of Brescia eighteen, in the region of Verona one, in the region of Cremasco two, in the region of Cremona five, in the region of Bergamo nine. The head of the province is this convent of San Giuseppe, the others follow according to their antiquity. Let the prayers of their inhabitants be heard, for the Salvation of all, especially the almsgivers who sustained them. The year of the Lord 18 August 1610, the sixth year of the pontificate of Pope Paul V.^[72]

Figure 7:

The first lunette of the life of St Bernardine; the introductory inscription below. Brescia, Convento di San Giuseppe. Early seventeenth century. The glass screen is a modern addition; it separates the cloister from the vestibule in front of the sacristy. Photograph by the author.

This inscription echoes some phrases in the longer Latin description of the Province of Brescia in Francesco Gonzaga’s 1587 history of the Observant Franciscan order, yet it is an original composition with its own aims.^[73] The inscription commemorates the beginning of the Observant Franciscan province of Brescia: on 18 February 1472,^[74] when Pope Sixtus IV divided the Franciscan Observants of Brescia, Bergamo, and Crema and surroundings from their confrères in Milan, with the bulla Circa facilem statum, creating a new province. The inscription then provides a geographical description of this territory, enumerating its four lakes, five rivers, three cities, and the four subregions, which contain its thirty-five convents. These are represented in the sequence of views of convents along the walls of the second cloister: the provincial headquarters San Giuseppe comes first, and others “follow according to their antiquity.”^[75] This refers to the ordering of these views: following San Giuseppe, the other convents are presented chronologically per each region (first Brescia, then Verona, Cremasco, Cremona, and Bergamo), according to their years of foundation.^[76] Finally, the inscription dates the cycle to 1610, when the convent of San Giuseppe was considered finished after decades of building.

The inscription elucidates the organization and direction of the cycle: the chronological development of this province, from foundation by Sixtus IV in 1472 until 1610, when the head convent of San Giuseppe in Brescia was finished. This is also indicative of the direction of the programme, which is cyclical. It starts with the introductory inscription – paired with the first lunette of St Bernardine – near the entrance of the sacristy (see Figure 3). The cycle then runs along the walls of the second cloister in clockwise direction – the consecutive lunettes relating Bernardine’s life in parallel with the chronologically ordered views of provincial convents – and terminates near the sacristy again, where the final lunette of Bernardine’s life and the Jerusalem map face the initial lunette and inscription (see Figure 8). This juxtaposition of the Jerusalem fresco and geographical description of the province of Brescia on the opposing wall, clearly points to an affinity between the topography of the Holy City and this Observant order province.

Figure 8:

Schematic plan of the second cloister by the author. N.B. the arrangement of the bays of this cloister corresponds to the plan showing the ground floor of the convent (Figure 3).

When maps of the Holy Land and Jerusalem are paired with maps of Italian topographies in mural map cycles, the aim typically is to represent a translatio religionis from the old religion to the new.^[77] The compositional rhetoric of the fresco cycle in Brescia points to the heavenly Jerusalem as a spiritual destination for the friars of this order province: the views of the convents precede the Jerusalem map, as earthly types of the heavenly city, each convent potentially a little Jerusalem. This is likely, given the age-old monastic tradition which interprets monastic buildings as both the route and gateway to the heavenly city for their inhabitants, constrained from travel by the monastic ideal of stabilitas loci.^[78] For some of the Observant Franciscans of San Giuseppe (at least those with governing roles within the order and preachers) mobility was the rule; in their case, the Jerusalemite association of convent buildings serves to highlight a common goal for all friars, notwithstanding individually diverse routes. In addition, Jerusalem is likely also presented as an earthly destination for the friars of the Brescian province, who might aspire to serve in the Observant Franciscan province of the Holy Land for a period.^[79]

It is clear, in any case, that the mirroring of the geographical description of the Brescia order province with the Jerusalem map, indicates that the sequence of views of convents they enclose is meant to project the geography of this province as a sacred geography. During the seventeenth century many religious orders published such sacred topographies of their order convents; what stands out about the fresco cycle at San Giuseppe are its medium (a painted cycle), its unmistakably architectural overtones, and its secluded, private setting.^[80]

While the cycle’s opening and concluding devices (the inscription and the Jerusalem map) are geographical, its components are also architectural and narrative: the views of Observant convent buildings and the Bernardine cycle. These two components of the cycle are not separate, but interconnected by common themes. The first view of a convent illustrates this. It represents San Giuseppe (see Figure 9). The convent is seen from the West, with its three successive cloisters prominently in the foreground. The street visible in front of the church façade emphasizes the convent’s urban context. In the background there is a hill dominated by fortified structures, showing Monte Cidneo with the castle of Brescia.^[81] Its inscription states: “In the year 1422 St Bernardine of Siena obtained the monastery of San Apollonio from this magnificent city, and in the year 1472 the same [city] gave to the friars that of San Rocco, but later, due to wars they were destroyed. In the year 1518 this one of San Giuseppe was built.”^[82]

Figure 9:

View of the convent of San Giuseppe in Brescia, ca. 125 cm × 72 cm. Brescia, Convento di San Giuseppe. Early seventeenth century. Photograph and schematic drawing by the author.

This first view emphasizes foundation by Bernardine (subject of the lunettes) and recalls the Observants’ trajectory of successive foundations in Brescia and visualizes the three-cloistered result of 1610. This urban trajectory then serves as a template for representing the overarching theme of progressing Observant Franciscan architectural consolidation at a provincial level: the views of convents which follow, ordered chronologically per subregion (Verona, Cremasco, Cremona, and Bergamo). Following the initial view, the cycle first includes older convents, some supposedly founded by Francis, which later joined the Observant movement. In several cases inscriptions foreground the involvement of prominent Observant founders such as St Bernardine, St Giovanni Capistrano, the blessed Amadeo da Silva, and Bonaventura Piantanida, as well as in many cases the support of local communities. Above all, the cycle conspicuously foregrounds Bernardine as founder of this Observant convent and province, since the development of the province unfolds together with his life, encircling the cloister in parallel.

If we consider the main elements of the iconographic programme together as coherently integrated parts of the same cycle, overarching themes emerge. The iconographic programme of the second cloister relates the history of the Observant Franciscan province of Brescia as a territory with a clear beginning. The introductory inscription acknowledges its roots in acrimonious division from Milan, but a more positive alternative is also suggested: the province was founded by a famous Observant Franciscan saint, St Bernardine. The cycle then emphasizes the development of this province through time and in geographical space by means of its chronologically ordered anchoring-points in the landscape: its convents.

The cycle takes the journey of architectural settlement experienced by the friars of San Giuseppe within the city – initiated by Bernardine in 1422 and completed in 1610 – as its starting point, and uses this as an exemplary template for telling the story of Observant Franciscan consolidation on a provincial level from 1472 onward. While the cycle is framed by geographical devices, its chronologically arranged loci are made present through images of convent buildings. Architecture thus remains the smallest indivisible particle at the basis of this history of Observant Franciscan geographical consolidation. The overall visual rhetoric of this cycle suggests that architectural establishment – both at urban and provincial level – was central to how the community at San Giuseppe aimed to memorialize this history of institutional consolidation: in explicitly geo-architectural terms.

In addition, the setting of this fresco cycle allows us to further examine its significance. Since painted wall maps and cycles were intended for a specific location (different from their printed counterparts), it is possible to reconstruct what their patrons and viewers may have seen in them, by paying attention to the original spatial context.^[83] Although women would have been allowed to enter the convent church, the cloister was off limits for them, while elite (male) visitors may have occasionally been welcomed by invitation.^[84] Nevertheless, the primary audience of the geographical fresco cycle at San Giuseppe in Brescia was the Observant Franciscan friars affiliated to this convent and/or the wider province of Brescia. For them the second cloister constituted a private, even a secluded space, where the friars could retreat to their cells for solitary prayer and meditation. This is also confirmed by the fresco cycle, which has a logical starting point for those arriving from inside the convent (from the third cloister, not from the first cloister which has a door opening to the street outside), pointing to the friars themselves as its primary audience. This offers a starting point for exploring what the cycle meant to the friars.

As members of the Franciscan Observance, they would instantly recognize St Bernardine, as an important Observant Franciscan saint. By narrating his life, the fresco cycle naturally encourages devotion to the saint. It also presents Bernardine as the founder of this convent (and several others in the province) calling to mind the illustrious lineage of the friars’ own community. The series of views of convents below further presses this local Observant Franciscan connection, by visualizing the geographical domain of the friars’ province. Encountering daily this composite image of their province and its history, turned it into a concrete presence in the minds of friars of San Giuseppe, facilitating affective connection to the broader political and religious community that this implies. As a constant visual presence, the fresco cycle helped to bridge the gap between the friars themselves and the abstract concept of the Observant Franciscan province of Brescia.^[85] This type of local and regional identification was important for these mendicant friars; both for those friars who spent their entire life here, and for preachers and leaders who would regularly translocate to a different convent, and sometimes to another order province. The location of the cycle – in the cloister of this very convent, within the city, and in the Observant order province of Brescia – contains and emplaces the viewer, creating a you are here effect for the friars: at San Giuseppe and in the province of Brescia.^[86] At the same time, the cycle suggests that this local presence can be connected to a projected – arguably still Observant Franciscan – presence elsewhere, through the fresco map of Jerusalem.^[87] The map not merely points to the Observant Franciscan foundation in Jerusalem at the time, but it also presents each of the provincial convents as potential little Jerusalems, precursors of the heavenly city, the spiritual destination all friars should strive for.

The cycle thus provided the friars of San Giuseppe mental scaffolding to help them identify with their local community, while at the same time bridging the gaps to the provincial, international, and even celestial levels of Observant Franciscan community.^[88] While mural map cycles typically serve to picture the extent of their patrons’ (claims to) political power, the geographical frescoes at San Giuseppe predominantly aim at engendering a sense of belonging.^[89]

3 The Architecture of Visual Memory and the Observance

My reading of the Observant Franciscan trajectory of architectural establishment in Brescia city and province, as well as of the visual commemoration of this trajectory in their second cloister suggests that members of Observant movements consciously reflected on architectural and geographical spread and establishment of their organizations, a process which was not over and done with at the beginning of the sixteenth century, but lasted well into the seventeenth century. While the fresco cycle in the second cloister at San Giuseppe in Brescia might, at first sight, be dismissed as merely second-rate devotional art, this obscures the complex projection of Observant memory and identity it entails. If anything, the case of the Observant Franciscans in Brescia which I have investigated, testifies to the still largely uncharted vibrancy, societal relevance, and artistic production of Observant movements during the Early Modern period, well beyond their late medieval institutionalization.

Particularly in the case of Observant organizations with medieval roots – such as Observant Franciscans, Dominicans, Cistercians, etc. – visual and/or material representations of order history and identity form part of longue durée cultural histories, which remain to be explored fully. For example, the fresco cycle at San Giuseppe in Brescia discussed here, taps into the long history of the cloister as an architectural space pre-eminently suited for meditative mnemonic practices. The basic principle of memory art practiced from antiquity onwards, is to first divide into smaller chunks the material to be memorized, and to then arrange them into a memory picture such as a building, seraph’s wings, a plan of Noah’s Ark, or a garden. The individual bits of information could then be easily re-collected from this mental image. This highly visual mnemonic technique, also called locational memory, attaches great importance to locating memory images in space. During the high Middle Ages, it flourished within European monasticism as a meditational technique for recollecting and composing religious texts.^[90] As discussed by Mary Carruthers, the most lasting expression of this medieval memory art practices were the monastic buildings themselves, which served as both support and conduit for memory work.^[91] The enigmatic non-linear iconographies of some of the most spectacular sculptural programmes in high medieval cloisters, are best explained through the cloister’s function as the place where monks would perform their lectio divina, meditative recollection and (re-)composition of the sacred texts.^[92]

When mendicant orders revitalized the mnemonic techniques of classical antiquity during the later Middle Ages (also in connection to their preaching activities), the Franciscans in particular remained deeply influenced by monastic practices, Cistercian ones in particular, developing a distinctive approach to memory which shaped their order historiographies and often foregrounded mediational prayer.^[93] While Franciscan ars memoriae naturally developed into distinct traditions across different parts of Europe, the role of the cloister as an architectural space suited for the display of memory images seems to have persisted into the fifteenth century, including the display of actual mnemonic images in conventual cloisters as murals or panels.^[94] The equally enduring prominent role of mnemonic images (mental and externalized, verbal and visual) within the fifteenth-century Italian Franciscan Observant reforms and preaching, is illustrated by the well-researched example of St Bernardine of Siena and his preaching.^[95]

Building on these medieval mnemonic foundations, early modern Observant Franciscanism participated in broadly accepted and intensely visual memory practices, of which the dry Renaissance treatises reviving the ancient ars memoriae (most often studied today) formed only one aspect.^[96] This point is perhaps best illustrated by the Rhetorica Christiana (Perugia, 1579), a fascinating publication on memory art as an intercultural tool for missionary friars by the Observant Franciscan Diego Valadés, one time procurator general of the Franciscan order.^[97] In the Rhetorica Valadés builds on the medieval heritage of memory art, and he refers to contemporary publications on memory techniques.^[98] Yet his purpose is practical rather than scholarly (missionary work, finding common ground with indigenous cultures through shared mnemonic practices), and his means are eminently visual and architectural, more so than the traditional internal, mental memory pictures.^[99] The series of illustrations which Valadés designed for his book are externalized memory pictures, one of which famously shows a Franciscan convent courtyard both as a missionary and a mnemonic space.^[100]

This outlook on memory practice shaped how early modern viewers could experience actual, visually decorated architectural spaces, as demonstrated by Valadés’ own response to the historiated walls of the papal palace in the Vatican. There he perceives:

Nothing but locational memory [art], so that we can perceive and understand wonderful things in themselves and in their context through meditation and faith. So that seeing everything ordered precisely, we can preserve it more firmly in memory. There [at St Peter’s palace in Rome] everything is shown – theology, law, logic, philosophy, rhetoric, religion, peace, and war – so that things are adapted to the place, and the place adapted to the things shown.^[101]

This suggests that taking into account the long history of Observant (including Franciscan) mnemonic practice may help to improve our interpretations and reconstructions of early modern viewer responses to devotional art, especially by religious orders.^[102]

In the case of the Observant Franciscan friars of San Giuseppe at Brescia, it seems highly probable that they perceived the fresco cycle in their second cloister as “adapted to the place, and the place adapted to the things shown.” For them, the cycle offered a mnemonic route or ductus, along images and places, ideal for recalling the history and topography of their province within the architectural space of their cloister.^[103] Seen from this angle, the fresco cycle appears not merely decorative or descriptive of their province and its history, but deeply imbued with recollective significance.